From Robert Fisk

I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers' home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.

But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel's warrior "commandos" stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week's end, the protesters had become "armed peace activists", vicious anti-Semites "professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole". I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn't quite get into this weird version of reality.

Turkish family protests that their sons wanted to be martyrs – something which most Turkish family members might say if their relatives had been shot by the Israelis – had been transformed into confirmation that they had been jihadis. "On that aid ship," a Sri Lankan texted me this week, "I had my niece, nephew and his wife on board. Unfortunately Ahmed (20-year-old nephew) got shot in the leg and now treated (sic) under military custody. I will keep you posted." He did indeed. Within hours, the press was at his family's home in Australia, demanding to know if Ahmed was a jihadi – or even a potential suicide bomber. Propaganda works, you see. We haven't seen a frame of film from the protesters because the Israelis have stolen the lot. No one has told us – if the Turkish ship was carrying such ruthless men – how their terrible plots to help the "terrorists" of Gaza were not uncovered in the long voyage from Turkey, even when it called at other ports. But Professor Gil Troy of McGill University in Montreal – in the rabid Canadian National Post, of course – was able to spout all that gunk about "armed peace activists" on Thursday.

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read more of Robert Fisk

Israeli troops say they have taken control of an aid ship trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel's military says soldiers boarded the Irish-owned Rachel Corrie from the sea and did not meet any resistance. It says the ship is now being taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. There has been no word from those on board. The incident comes five days after nine people were killed in clashes when troops boarded a Turkish aid ship, prompting international criticism. Israel says it will question those on board at the port and transfer the aid to the Gaza Strip by land after checking the cargo for banned items. There are five Irish and six Malaysian pro-Palestinian activists, plus several crew, on the boat. The Rachel Corrie is named after a US college student who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer as she protested over house demolitions in Gaza in 2003.

From the New York Times

...

The past two decades in particular have illustrated to Jews and to the world a painful premise, but one that was implicit in the Zionist idea from the beginning: If, in the words of the 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the Jewish people have a natural right “to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state,” then the inescapable codicil of this natural inheritance is that the Jewish people, “like all other nations,” are every bit as capable of barbarism and stupidity.

IF Israel was, as the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann put it, to “become as Jewish as England is English and America is American,” then, like England and America and every other modern polity, Israel must slog along through history, purblind and panicky, from its founding to its ultimate fate, prey at every moment to — and, God willing, on guard against — its rich, inglorious human heritage of blockheadedness.

After my initial shock at this fresh display of foolery by the Chelmites of Jerusalem had subsided, I felt an abstract pity for the wasted dead with their cargo of lumber and delusions, for the ill-equipped, poorly led soldiers who had killed them and, running true and clear like a subterranean stream, pity for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas the past four years, and his family. But I also felt a kind of grim relief, even resolve.

Let us shed our illusions, starting with ourselves, whoever we are and however august our inheritance of stupidity. Let us not forget the eternal hole in our human pocket. Let us not, henceforward, judge Israel or seek to have it judged for its intelligence, for its prowess, for its righteousness or for its moral authority, by any standard other than the pathetic, debased and rickety one that we apply, so inconsistently and self-servingly, to ourselves and to everybody else. And let us not forgive ourselves — any more than we forgive Israel, or than Israel can forgive itself — for that terrible inconsistency.

Michael Chabon is the author of “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.”

from the Washington Post

His [Obama's] dilemma has come into clear focus after Israel's military operation this week, in which commandos boarded a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters, killing nine civilians, among them a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Turkish descent.

The head of Israel's foreign intelligence service warned parliament the next day that the country is "gradually turning from an asset of the United States to a burden." An Irish aid ship was steaming toward Gaza on Friday night despite Israeli warnings that it would be stopped.

Israel has a unique set of security threats and national ambitions that have fostered policies inconsistent with Obama's broader agenda, including his push to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and repair U.S. relations with the Islamic world. That has forced him to carve out exceptions for Israel that undermine the consistency he seeks in dealing with allies and antagonists alike.

Those differences have also made it hard for Obama to speak unequivocally in support of Israel during difficult times. Asked by CNN's Larry King on Thursday if it were "premature then to condemn Israel," Obama said, "I think that we need to know what all of the facts are."

Israeli officials "look at the world quite differently from the way from this president does, and they are not willing to just fall in line because he is the president," said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who advised Obama's campaign and now teaches at Princeton University. "Israel and the United States are seeing the threat environment in the region -- and the ways to deal with the threat environment -- in increasingly different ways. And for the United States that means Israel is a problem, as an ally heading in a very different direction."

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Gus: while Hamas wants the obliteration of Israel, the only Israeli solution to the Palestine problem is not to have Palestine at all and to continue the gradual take-over of Palestinian lands by Jewish settlement till the deed is complete, say by 2120. For years this has been the secretly supported solution by the US apart from a couple of administrations. Sure, there is the odd infrigement yellow card from time to time about new Jewish settlements in "occupied territories" but these settlements have gone ahead nonetheless. "Tough titties" says Israel, while the US "has strong words" but no action...

The only solution apart from this one — which is to "absorb" the Palestinians into a "greater Israel" (Hamas will never be able to get Israel to cease to exist) — is to have a two state (possibly three with Gaza separate) solution. But this is not on Israel's radar. Israel wants the lot. Israel will create the unrest, the punishment of a people, using the full force retaliation for small skirmishes — and also help ferment the skirmishes too, so it can react with the "moral" claim of "defending itself". The Palestinian have responded in kind, but their tits-for-tats are more like fleas on an elephant hide rather than from equal adversaries. The world can see this as the years have gone by, as Israel slowly but surely takes over with no wish to share... If this is what we want, then let it be.

The slow destruction of the Palestinian people will follow, till they are absorbed, gobbled, dissolved, eradicated, or simply capitulated. It's our call...

It's the US call. as the US supply the Israel with the armament and the knouts to maintain the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, in a state of siege, of fear, of hate and desperation.

So Gus says, let the guy from Qatar help the Gazans to regain some dignity. There might still be a few skirmishes but the UN can place a proper buffer there, as less and less skirmishes will be happening, with a rise in self-esteem and Gazan pride.

But this the Israelis do not want...

The world can entice the Israeli and the Hamas to change their extremist views. We owe this to our future. And it's possible to achieve should we wish to have a "solution" to this problem.

But too many people on both sides do not wish to have a solution, though. The instability is sought after in order to forment a certain diplomatic position of a greater empire or a culture of victims. We can do better than that.

May everyone find peace.

Israel will reject a proposed international commission to investigate its deadly raid on a Gaza aid flotilla, its ambassador to the US has said.

Michael Oren told US broadcaster Fox News that Israel has the ability and the right to investigate its own military.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had earlier telephoned Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with the proposal.

Nine people died when Israeli commandos stormed the Turkish ship last week.

"We are rejecting an international commission. We are discussing with the Obama administration a way in which our inquiry will take place," Mr Oren told Fox News Sunday.

He said Israel would not apologise for the incident. Eight of those killed were Turkish, and the ninth had joint US-Turkish nationality.

The Australian shot during last week's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla says Israeli soldiers left him to bleed on the deck after a bullet hit an artery in his leg.

Ahmed Luqman was shot twice during the raid and lost so much blood he nearly died. His condition meant he was one of the last activists deported from Israel.

He is now in an Istanbul hospital, from where he gave an exclusive interview to the ABC.

Mr Luqman said he was on the back deck of the flotilla flagship the Mavi Marmara, running to get inside, when he saw a laser sight settle on his leg.

Then he was down.

"I obviously knew that I'd been shot when I could see a bullet on the floor and a puddle of blood," he said.

"Blood just pissing out of my leg, from two holes. You put two and two together, and it looks like you've been shot."

The first bullet tore through his leg, partially severing his femoral artery. Another shot hit near his knee.

Israel says its troops were justified in opening fire after being attacked by a small band of violent activists, but Mr Luqman says that is simply fiction.

"None of us know anything about fighting and none of us intended to fight. [We're] peaceful people," he said.

As bad as the assault was, the aftermath, says Mr Luqman, was worse.

"I've just been left there to lay down on the ground and just friggin' bleed, and I can't believe it," he said.

"Many of the soldiers that came up, picked up my passport because it was a different colour, looked at it, chucked it on the ground next to me and said, 'Ah, you're Australian'."

Mr Luqman says Israeli soldiers refused him any sort of medical attention.

"They made me walk, without a stretcher, and climb all the stairs on my own without any assistance, and I passed out like three or four times just getting up the stairs on my own," he said.

Mr Luqman's wife Jerry was with him. The nursing student helped keep him alive as his blood drained out.

Later, as other activists were deported, she chose to remain in detention in Israel to stay with her husband. She says the harsh treatment did not end on the ship.

"Their treatment of us was just completely unacceptable. I've never met anyone whose heart has become so hard and so black in my life," she said.

see toon at top and read more at the ABC

JERUSALEM — Israel’s ambassador to Washington said Sunday that his country would reject an international inquiry into last week’s deadly raid on a Turkish ship but officials in Israel insisted the government had not made a final decision on the matter.

“We are rejecting the idea of an international commission,” Michael Oren, the ambassador, told Fox News Sunday. “We are discussing with the Obama administration the way in which our inquiry will take place.”

He added, “At the end of the day, Israel has the right, the duty, as a democracy to investigate any military activity.

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Israel is no "democracy". See toon at top and read more at the NYT.

By Jeremy Salt

07 June, 2010
PalestineChronicle.com  (Incomplete and emphasis mine)

Ankara: In the wake of the storming of the Mavi Marmara (Blue Marmara), the truth cannot be obscured by the propaganda pouring out of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, particularly out of the mouth of the repulsive Mark Regev. The ship was sailing in international waters when it was attacked. The blockade of Gaza has been described by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, as illegal. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, has been calling for months for it to be lifted. Israel has no rights in Gaza or in the waters off Gaza, and no rights in international rights beyond those belonging to all shipping. What it described as a 'police action' was in fact not just an act of piracy but an act of war. The attack was ordered by the government of Israel. The Israeli assault force could see that the ship was draped with a large Turkish flag but proceeded with the attack anyway. There is a direct parallel with the air and sea attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, not far from where the Mavi Marmara was assaulted. The Liberty was flying an American flag as big as a bed sheet, but the Israelis still attacked it with missiles and torpedoes over many hours, failing to sink the boat as apparently intended but killing 34 sailors and seriously wounding many others.

(COMMENT. And while American Senators and Congressmen depend on Jewish finances to get elected, there is no Sovereign American protection for US citizens murdered by the Zionists and they should tear up their infamous flag).

The picture of what happened on board the Mavi Marmara has been clarified by the evidence of the passengers and by the forensic evidence revealed by the autopsies carried out on the nine dead men. The attack was launched while the Muslim passengers were praying. This was deliberate. The Israelis hoped to catch them off guard, but when the first group of commandos landed on the top deck they were overpowered by a small number of Turkish civilians. Photos published in the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper show one commando lying on his back with his belly showing, a second wandering around with a bleeding nose and a third crying. The Israelis tried to destroy these images but they were reconstructed in Turkey through the use of advanced technology. The commandos were disarmed. Had their captors been intent on 'lynching' them, as the Israeli media claimed, they could have shot them, but instead they threw their guns into the sea.

It seems that this humiliation of what is supposed to be a crack marine force triggered off the pathological rage evident in the way the Turkish civilians were killed. They ranged in age from 61 to 19. The forensics show that they were all shot many times, and at close range. A photographer was shot between the eyes, blowing his brains out the back of his head. Furkan Doðan, a 19-year-old Turkish-American student who had been living in the central Anatolian city of Kayseri, and had recently passed the university entrance exam, was shot once in the stomach and four times in the head. (The US government has allowed the murder of this American passport-holder to pass without demanding any explanation from the Israeli government, but then it did nothing following the murder of Rachel Corrie, and, further back, suppressed the truth about the attack on the Liberty). Other Turks were murdered by shots to the top of the head, fired from snipers sitting in the helicopters circling overhead. This bloodbath enabled the Israelis to take control of the ship. The passengers, kidnapped on the high seas, were taken to Israel and detained and threatened with preposterous charges (i.e., illegally entering the country) before being released.

COMMENT:  The Hebrew/Zionists in occupied Palestine are, in many way, much worse than the perpetrators of the Bengali – Armenian or Jewish Holocausts.  Many crimes were committed as  a result of an overall world wide war –  Jewish Gaza Holocaust and the enormous number of associated crimes against humanity – are purely of choice and planned by the Zionist Government.  Like the Murdoch media’s Terrorist Attack  on Australia’s Federal Government, no one can believe a single word of anything the Jewish media releases.

God Bless Australia and may we make sure that the foreigners do not succeed in the take over of our Government as they did in the Dismissal of 1975.  NE OUBLIE.

US President Barack Obama has said the situation in Gaza is "unsustainable" and promised millions of dollars in new aid for the territory.

He made the remarks as he met Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Washington.

The White House visit was scheduled before the deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last week.

Mr Obama urged both Israel and the Palestinians to make concessions and return to stalled peace talks.

"Not only is the status quo with respect to Gaza unsustainable, but the status quo with respect to the Middle East is unsustainable," Mr Obama said.

"It is time for us to go ahead, move forward on a two-state solution."

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Gus: as Ziva David would say: "it's a pace in the right direction..."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it.

In a statement released following an emergency session held after the raid on 31 May, the Security Council called for a "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent" investigation.

The three-man panel will be led by former Israeli Supreme Court judge Yaakov Tirkel. The other members are Amos Horev, a retired major-general in the Israeli military and a former president of the Israel Institute of Technology, and Shabtai Rosen, a 93-year-old professor of international law.

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Gus: they should include Helen Thomas in this panel, to balance the findings and the age gap...

Israel has stepped up its attempts to stop an aid ship breaking its blockade of Gaza, sending a letter to the UN and engaging Greece and Moldova in talks.

The Moldovan-flagged ship, Amalthea, chartered by a charity run by the son of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, was due to leave the Greek port of Lavrio on Saturday.

Israel said it now believed the ship would not reach Gaza.

An Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound ship in May killed nine Turkish activists.

Israel insisted its troops were defending themselves but the raid sparked international condemnation. Israel recently eased its blockade, allowing in almost all consumer goods but maintaining a "blacklist" of some items.

Israel says its blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent the supply of weapons to the Hamas militant group which controls Gaza.

Israel has been engaged in intense diplomatic activity to prevent the Amalthea, renamed Hope for the mission, reaching Gaza.

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Good on the son of Gaddafi to stir the possum...

Turkey said Friday that it was downgrading its diplomatic and military ties with Israel and expelling its ambassador in a display of anger at Israel's refusal to apologize for a deadly commando raid last year on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey would reduce its diplomatic representation in Israel to the level of second secretary - one of the lowest diplomatic ranks - and had ordered Israel's ambassador, Gabby Levy, to leave Turkey by Wednesday. The move stopped short of a complete breach in diplomatic relations but nonetheless seemed likely to deepen the already serious alienation between the countries and to further isolate Israel in the region as Arab Spring revolts threaten to undermine other previously stable relationships there.

"All military agreements have been suspended," Mr. Davutoglu said but added that relations could return to normal if Israel apologized for the killings of nine people on board the ship and lifted its embargo on Gaza - demands Israel has consistently rejected. Both sides, however, professed readiness for further efforts to resolve the dispute.

"Our aim here is not to hurt the historical friendship between Turkey and Israel, but, on the contrary, to redirect the current Israeli government" so as to correct a "mistake that does not correspond with their exceptional friendship," Mr. Davutoglu said.

Israel repeated on Friday that while it expressed "regret for the loss of life" in the raid on the flotilla, which was challenging the naval blockade, it was not prepared to offer the full apology Turkey is demanding, saying that its soldiers were acting in self-defense.

Israel also sought to play down the impact of the expulsion of its ambassador, saying Mr. Levy had already completed his tour of duty and had been about to leave for home.

Turkey once ranked as Israel's closest strategic ally in the Muslim world, but ties began to fray with an Israeli military operation in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

Turkey Expels Israeli Ambassador Over Flotilla Dispute

On May 28, 2012, almost two years after the Israeli attack, a court in Istanbul, Turkey, voted unanimously to approve an indictment against Israel's former military chief Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as for Eliezer Marom, Amos Yadlin, and Avishai Levi, the former heads of the Israeli Navy, Air Force Intelligence, and Military Intelligence. If convicted, each faces nine consecutive life terms in prison for "inciting to kill monstrously, and by torturing."

The indictment also charged several unidentified soldiers who shot passengers. The charges against members of the Israeli military include commandeering vehicles, voluntary manslaughter, attempted murder, persecution and causing damage to the ship.

The indictment specifies 490 victims and complainants, among them 189 who were injured during the raid. The indictment rejected Israeli claims that Israeli commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara acted in self-defense, saying that Israeli commandos used disproportional force by firing with heavy weapons and automatic rifles on passengers who only carried "plastic flag masts, spoons, and forks." The indictment stated that some of the victims were shot dead from close range and from the back.

Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders on Gaza Flotilla

In 2013, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad appeared to urge the wiping out of all Jews and cited as an example the Holocaust.

Anti-Semitism is an artificial construct created to stop people from criticizing Jews for any wrongdoing, making them the only race that is beyond reproach, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in an interview with the Associated Press on Monday.

“There is one race that cannot be criticized. If you are anti-Semitic, it seems almost as if you are a criminal … anti-Semitic is a term that is invented to prevent people from criticizing the Jews for doing wrong things,” noted.

Mohamad, who was sworn in as prime minister in May, earlier said that “Jews rule this world by proxy.”

He still insists that he is not against Jews, but only criticizes their actions.

In 2013 Mohamad said what may be interpreted as a call to wipe out all Jews, citing as an example the Holocaust of European Jews by the Nazis during WWII.

 “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews,” he told the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Kuala Lumpur.

“There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counterattack,” he said.

“We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million,” he continued.

He added that he was glad to be labeled an anti-Semite.

“How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies, but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies?” he argued.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/asia/201808161067244238-malaysia-pm-jews/

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